


Dreaming

by PhantomArchangel



Series: Iustitia Interludes [4]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 08:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18070118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomArchangel/pseuds/PhantomArchangel
Summary: When you dream you’re seeing whatever your soulmate is currently experiencing. Based on what he's seeing, Malavai just hopes this means his soulmate isn't some delinquent.





	Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr prompt!

When Malavai is fifteen years old his shoulder gets dislocated.

A scream rips out of his throat as he wakes up, his hand flying protectively to his right shoulder, tears welling up in his eyes. It _hurts_.

Within a minute, his mother is rushing into his room. “Malavai? What is it, what’s wrong?”

The pain is fading now, but it still aches. His shoulder feels hot and stretched out, as though every muscle has been inflamed. One difference is that he can move it without the pain changing in intensity, and his mind latches onto that discrepancy, bringing it to the forefront to prove that the pain is lying to him. “I had a dream,” he tells her, still clutching his shoulder. “I - _they_ \- hurt their arm. Dislocated shoulder, I think.”

His mother frowns, but nods in understanding. “Do you want an cold pack?”

“No. I don’t think it’d help.” There’s not much either of them can do about it. Nothing much _anyone_ can do about it, besides his apparent soulmate not getting beat up. He remembers seeing fists raised and getting pushed around. “Mother?” he admits, “I think they were in a fight.”

“As in…”

“Not, you know, blasters.”

She breathes a sigh of relief. At least his soulmate probably isn’t fighting in the war. “What did you see that wasn’t fighting?”

“They’re smaller than me,” he says. He tries to pick through the dream for details. “A good few years younger.”

“Oh, well that can be nothing depending on when you meet them.”

He huffs. The age thing doesn’t really matter to him - his mother is older than his father, and he knows of soulmates that have almost twenty years between them. “I really hope my soulmate isn’t some - some _delinquent_.”

She just laughs and ruffles his hair.

~*~

Two weeks after his parents die on Rhen Var, Malavai gets a better dream.

In it, he’s studying for a test on Imperial government, going over the details of all the current Dark Council members and their personal histories. For some reason, his soulmate had been really absorbed with memorizing dates - are they bad at numbers or something? And they had been _so_ worried about failing the test. End of year final exams? No, it hadn’t seemed like that. Stars, he hopes he’s not supposed to end up with someone who is not only a fight starting delinquent but also on the brink of dropping out of school.

Even so, it’s still a light in the darkness.

Everything might be in shambles right now, but at least his soulmate is an Imperial. At least there’s that.

~*~

Malavai wakes up swearing.

A sock smacks him in the forehead in response. That’d be Shen, the man he shares a barrack with. There’s two other soldiers in here with them, but they’re heavier sleepers and in the two months that Malavai’s been here, they’ve mostly gotten used to this sort of thing.

“What’d they do this time?” Shen asks groggily.

Phantom pain lingers in his chest when he breathes in and his fingers splay out across his left side, just to reassure himself that he’s physically fine. “Broken ribs,” he reports. His hand traces the bones under his skin. True ribs six and seven. Probably shattered. “They kept getting _kicked_.”

“Sounds unpleasant.”

“At least it wasn’t another shattered kneecap.” That had only happened once but still. No amount of uneventful dreams of studying or reading through speeder magazines could make up for just how much it had hurt.

“Stars, no wonder you’re becoming a medic. By the time you finally meet this idiot they’re going to be held together with duratape and glue. Don’t they ever have decent things happen to them?”

That’s not why he’s becoming a medic, but he supposes it doesn’t matter. “Occasionally,” he replies absently.

In this dream, they’d been armed, although it had been difficult to see what with, given that most of what they’d seen - what _he’d_ seen - had been someone else’s boot and their own arms trying to cover their head. Maybe it was with a vibroblade? He remembers hands holding it, like for practice? Are they in the military as well? A very stupid voice in the back of his head wonders if maybe they’re in training to be a red guard, or if they’re in Imperial Intelligence, or any number of exciting possibilities.

Unlikely. He goes back to sleep and this time dreams of white medbay walls. Good. They’re not a _complete_ idiot then.

~*~

After Malavai’s third, pointless, dreary year on Balmorra, he’s beginning to suspect that whoever his soulmate is, they spend the majority of every day getting injured. More times than not he’ll wake up nursing imaginary bruises, and even the dreams that are of just peaceful daily routine will include sore muscles and cuts on his soulmate’s hands.

One week, out of frustration at the interference to his work that these phantom pains are causing, he writes ‘Please stop injuring yourself’ on his wrist every morning, in the hopes that if they dream of him, they’ll see the message. Nothing comes of it, except one month later, when he dreams of them flipping through a speeder bike magazine, he can see the words ‘sorry - I’m trying’ written on their wrist.

Given how inconvenient walking around with ink on his wrist is, he doesn’t attempt to communicate in that manner again. And the injuries don’t decrease in frequency to the point where he starts getting in the habit of taking sleeping aids, as they increase his odds of relatively dreamless nights.

Then he dreams of reaching out, his hands closing around someone else’s neck except they’re nowhere near his reach, feeling veins struggle underneath his fingers. Watching a boy - _young_ , maybe sixteen - choke and sputter and claw at invisible hands on their throat. Watches the boy die.

 _Okay_ , Malavai thinks when he wakes, trying very hard not to panic, _my soulmate is Sith._

That’s… unexpected.

At least they aren’t some delinquent?

~*~

The revelation that his soulmate is apparently - to his surprise and confusion - does shed light on some things. When he next dreams, he recategorizes the fights he sees as training. The weapons they’re holding are vibroswords, clearly practice for lightsabers, and thankfully, the injuries petter out into very little after that revealing dream. He saw nothing from them for a month, even though he abandoned the sleep aids in an effort to find out more information, but after that month the dreams restarted and suddenly his soulmate seems to be winning more fights than losing.

Thank the stars.

For the first time in years, his sleep, and his dreams, are peaceful.

~*~

One night he sees their face.

Er - her face. He thinks. The image had been blurry.

She’d been standing in front of a mirror, black ink and blood smeared on her hands despite the sink below her. There had been a needle - She’d been tattooing _her face_. Her _eyelids_. And there had been _horns_. A - A Zabrak, then? A Zabrak with _ludicrous_ pain tolerance. He sits up in bed, pressing his palms into his closed eyes to try and get that horrible sensation out. Every aspect of her face had been burning with pain, and she’d just _stood_ there and made it worse.

It had _hurt_ , too, and not just physically. He’d looked out through her eyes and all he’d wanted to do was curl into a ball and cease existing.

He’s never seriously considered looking for his soulmate before. Part of that had been very limited information - searching for one Sith in the Empire is a dead end before it’s even started. Part of it had been his own reluctance. He’s stuck on Balmorra, after all, and that’s unlikely to change. Why put forth so much effort for something that’s not really going to reap any rewards, and why would he find them only to have to inform them that he’s - well - _trapped_. It wouldn’t be fair, especially not to a Sith.

Now he’s less certain. Something has gone wrong in her life, something that just dreams can’t comprehend. Something that some deep down part of himself wants to help her with.

And isn’t that a foolish thought. He’ll meet her eventually. That’s what he tells himself.

~*~

“I didn’t mean - “

“Get out.”

“It was an accident - “

“Jillins,” Malavai says, slamming his datapad down on the terminal. “Get. Out.”

The man leaves in a rush, bumping into two people on his way out, causing one of them to swear as she stumbles into his office. It’s a blue Twi’lek woman, a slave collar on her neck - _not_ who he’d been expecting, and she’s cursing up a storm, dragging someone else in behind her. Malavai gets to his feet, preparing to shoo the slave out of here, when the second person enters and -

It’s her.

 _Her_ , her.

Her face looks only a little older than when he saw her in that mirror, her tattoos complete and fully healed, and there’s only an echo of that terrible sorrow that had dominated her eyes before. Shorter than he expected. For some reason he’d thought Sith, and then he’d thought Zabrak, and he’d assumed a height that she absolutely does not have.

“You must be Lieutenant Quinn,” she says, bowing at the waist. Polite, he thinks. That’s also surprising. Polite and small. His mind is trying very hard to think of something less clinical to say about her. Should he be feeling something he isn’t? Does she know who he is? Does she _care_ , does she even want to know who he is in relation to her, does she - “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she continues, “I’m Gimrizh Korribanil, Darth Baras’s newest apprentice.”

“Ah.” His throat feels like dust. So she’s - he’s supposed to be spying on her. He’s not sure if this revelation makes that aspect of his job easier, more difficult, or entirely impossible. “That - that does complicate matters.”

~*~


End file.
